Are cheaply made toys more dangerous than expensive ones? As much as I’d like to say no, the answer is probably yes. After all, we don’t manufacture toys in China because we think they do a better job of creating safe toys. They do a better job of making them inexpensively. Producing cheap toys–to keep the kids quiet and not spend a fortune–has been the American way for quite some time. It’s time to think about buying quality versus quantity.

Spend more on fewer toys. That’s the lesson learned from the toy toxin scare. Parents are stepping up to the plate where government and industry have failed by taking preventative measures into their own hands. NPR recently featured a story about Moms Rising, a non-profit group that started a new text-message service to allows shoppers to check a database with information about the safety of specific products. All you need to do is dial 41411 from your cell phone while you’re at the toy store. Then enter the name of the toy and press send. You’ll receive a text message back telling you whether or not the toy has tested safe.

Or you can check at HealthyToys online and see an up-to-date listing of test results on specific toys. The group has tested 500 toys for lead, PVC, cadmium, and other harmful chemicals. They detail the effects of these toxins on children. The Ecology Center reports that 35% of 1,200 children’s products tested were found to contain lead. Activists can sign a petition at MomsRising to ask the government to clamp down on toxic toys.

In the toy business, 65% of sales occur between the day after Thanksgiving and the day before Christmas. That means we’re into heavy buying season. And 80% of the toys on the shelves this holiday season are from China. But China isn’t all that’s to blame. A USA Today article reported that “most of the toy recalls in the last 20 years were due to design problems, and that U.S.-made toys were the subject of four of the 40 toy recalls the CPSC announced in the 2006 fiscal year, or 10%.

Is anything worth buying? The Daily Green lists over 500 safe-from-toxin toys for the holidays.

The bottom line is that we’ve taken two steps backward this holiday season. Before we can focus our attention on making toys that are stimulating and innovative we’ve got to master the basics. In order to make toys good we first have to make toys that do no harm.

It’s too bad that so much of our effort this holiday will go into simply buying non-toxic toys. What a wasted opportunity to buy toys that are really innovative and creative. Parents’ primary concern should always be safety, but don’t forget the quality of the play experience, too.